Columns

Admit it, greenies: the game’s up for renewable energy

David Cameron is a most reliable weather vane. Last week, surrounded by
billionaire industrialists in Davos, the prime minister proclaimed that
Britain would follow America in a single-minded drive to reduce its energy
costs for manufacturers, via the oil and gas extraction process known as
hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Last month, however, he told Tim Farron, president of the Liberal Democrats,
that he agreed that man-made climate change arising from carbon-based energy
production was the cause of the recent “destructive” storms in the UK.

But then again, last November the PM told a group of Tories that he would be
focusing on getting rid of all the “green crap”— part of his response to Ed
Miliband’s pledge to freeze energy prices. Well, that’s coalition government
for you — tell your own party’s backbenchers that you are fed up with
excessive subsidies for giant onshore wind turbines and your Lib Dem
colleagues